Bitten Planet Suspended in Time

Bitten Planet Suspended in Time

Manga Chapter 6-4

TV Episode 32

Manga Chapter Summary:

Tetsuro and Maetel stare out into space from the 999. Maetel says they are between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. It is as if they are in the middle of two archipelagos. The Conductor says their next stop is the Fur(r)y Planet. As they head through this portion of space the train starts shaking. Tetsuro notices that the space between planets outside is odd. The Conductor claims the locomotive has lost its way and the space rails have vanished. It’s as if they’ve derailed, even though they are moving forward.

Without rails the locomotive itself doesn’t know their destination. Eventually the 999 makes its way towards a planet with a lot of missing chunks out of it, as if it was a partially eaten apple. One of the passengers in the train car claims they are looking at his home planet and asks them to forgive him for causing the train to take this detour. The narrator says this planet, the Bitten Planet Suspended in Time, is a planet similar to Cipango, the land of gold. Tetsuro comments on the nice aroma as they depart the station and Maetel says since this was an unscheduled stop, they shouldn’t stray too far.

Tetsuro points to the nearby ramen cart and happily starts consuming some with Maetel, happy that it is authentic ramen. Suddenly the ground around them shakes greatly. The ramen cart owner says there’s no need to panic, as this type of thing happens regularly. We then see a giant spaceship taking off from the planet. The cart owner says the ship was carrying soil from this planet to other planets. They excavate it then sell it on other planets. Maetel realizes this is why the planet looks like it does. The soil here is tasty and edible. No other planet can produce such delicious food.

Tetsuro is skeptical, but sticks his finger in the ground and tastes it, finding it a good taste. Tetsuro wonders why they are permitting this; at this rate the planet will disappear. The Conductor rushes over to them saying the train is working properly and they need to board now, as the train is about to take off. The one who tampered with the train finally left it alone.

The 999 takes off and we hear the passenger from earlier angrily start yelling. He says he hijacked the train to return to his homeland. It was a beautiful place he was proud of and gave him peace of mind during his travels. But now he’s seeing that it is gradually disappearing and being gnawed at by others. He says the next time he’ll return to his homeland will be the day he dies. His true homeland is shining within his heart and isn’t these disfigured landscapes.

Tetsuro, who just sees the man’s muscular arms, not his face, says he’s never seen a tough warrior crying like that. Maetel says it is hard to accept when your homeland has changed a great deal. The Conductor says with the detour over they’ll be going to their next stop, Fur(r)y. We see one final shot of the planet, with barely any of it left. The narrator says if the Bitten Planet doesn’t exist anymore, it’s not the fault of the excavators, but rather its inhabitants. Despite that there is no trace of documentation that recorded the moment it vanished.

TV Episode Summary:

The episode adds quite a bit of content to the storyline. The episode starts with the 999 passing another train, heading for the planet Lute. With some time until their next stop, Tetsuro and Maetel head to the dining car, where they run into the warrior, who is eating. The warrior asks Tetsuro and Maetel if he can join them and says his name is Edmond. He tells them he is heading to his home planet for the first time in 50 years, at the planet Sweet Sweet. While Tetsuro laughs as the planet’s name, Maetel has a rather sad look on her face. Edmond asks Tetsuro about his home and we see a flashback of footage of the slums on Earth from the first episode as well as Tetsuro crying over his dead mother. Tetsuro gets angry about this.

Edmond fondly reminisces about his home, the green hill there and how he played as a kid. We see a flashback to him running around as a kid and fishing. Tetsuro and Maetel return to their seats, with Edmond sitting near them, anxiously awaiting the return home. Tetsuro asks Maetel why she is so quiet and she says he’ll know soon enough.

The Conductor comes in, announcing their next stop as the Bitten Planet. Edmond thinks he got the planet’s name wrong, but the Conductor says its name changed 30 years ago. We then see the partially bitten looking planet and Edmond gets quite distressed. He rushes out with anger and fear after they depart the station. Maetel tells Tetsuro it’d be better to leave him alone. Edmond enters a robotic taxi and is told Green Hill no longer exists, although there’s a place that used to be called that. The taxi brings him there and he is distressed to find the green and forests gone, instead the landscape is a wasteland. Edmond falls to his knees and cries.

We then cut to the ramen cart sequence seen in the manga. When the rocket takes off from the planet, Edmond also sees it. The rocket returns to the planet, and Tetsuro and Maetel head there. Vacuum-like devices come out of the rocket and start extracting soil from a nearby hill, eventually consuming it entirely. Bags of gold are then sent out of the rocket ship to some government officials from the planet and the rocket takes off again. Edmond shows up, angry at them selling their land. The officials say doing so has made them rich.

Edmond shoots at the device used to gather the coins then starts firing at the officials. Eventually the gun is shot out of his hands and he is seized. Maetel and Tetsuro come out and Maetel tells them to let him go. Maetel blows up some of the gold, then avoids shots from the officials. Tetsuro also starts firing at them. The head official begs her to stop due to the money being destroyed and releases Edmond. The head official tells his men to simply lie about them being robbed. The chapter ends similar to the manga, with the 999 departing and Edmond crying in his chair about how he no longer has a homeland to return to. He tells Tetsuro he will find a second homeland. There will be some homeland out there that will accept him.

The segment at the beginning about the 999 being between the Milky Way and Andromeda is cut, as is the entire aspect of the plot of the warrior/Edmond forcing the train to head to the planet against its will. Also cut are any references to the Fur(r)y Planet, most likely because the order of the storylines were swapped, with the episode featuring that planet moved up from directly after this story to directly before it.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Edmond – Takeshi Aono

Ramen Seller – Kenichi Ogata

Government Official A – Yonehiko Kitagawa (Kunihiko Kitagawa)

Government Official B – Seiji Satou

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

It’s quite a depressing chapter this time! Once again Matsumoto comes up with a rather out there concept, a planet that is edible. And yet the real life message that this is a metaphor for is quite clear. This chapter’s all about the relentless pursuit to use up natural resources in the interest of making money. In real life this would be something like forests, clean water and the like, while in Galaxy Express 999 it is literally the planet itself! Oftentimes natural resources are finite, or at the very least can’t be reproduced at a speed in order to keep up with demand. If society or those both excavating and consuming those natural resources don’t control themselves, we can find ourselves in a position where those resources no longer exist at all. I’m not an expert on the subject, but I’m sure there are types of wildlife or other things that humanity consumed at too much a level and is now gone forever. I think of the restraints that cities or governments put on things like fishing or hunting, to avoid wiping out entire species. I am quite a bit more optimistic these days on this subject than how things likely were 40+ years ago when this chapter was originally made. I do think people are a lot more aware of things these days and while that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem, I think we have more to combat it, and have more of a mentality about what a wrong thing it is and how careful we should be.

Another theme of the chapter is returning to one’s homeland, which is the goal of the fellow passenger on the train who somehow causes it to detour here. We don’t know too much about this character; in an oddity we don’t even see his face in the manga chapter. It’s also rather surprising that he isn’t thrown off the train for what he did (although he never appears again after this chapter). The unnamed warrior was looking forward to returning to his homeland, only to find the devastating state it is now in. This is another theme that comes up often in real life. People return to their hometown and find it isn’t the same as it was before. Maybe there have been major changes there. Maybe they remembered things too fondly and it was never as good as they thought it was. In any case it can be quite a disappointment or sad thing for that person and that’s what the warrior faces in this chapter. His homeland doesn’t really exist anymore, both figuratively and literally. The only home for him is what is in his heart.

This is one of those episodes that I felt was stronger than the original manga chapter. In particular, we focus a lot more on the warrior, who is named Edmond. In fact Edmond gets so much screen time it kind of comes off as if Tetsuro and Maetel are the guest characters this episode! We see Edmond fondly remembering his time on his planet and watch as he discovers what his home has become. One aspect I really liked that wasn’t in the manga chapter was the parallels between Edmond and Tetsuro. Tetsuro only has sadness when he thinks of his home, the Earth, and wants to forget it. By the end of the episode, Edmond finds that he now has the same mentality that Tetsuro has. Edmond is also a really likable and sympathetic character, helped by the additional attention he gets and the fact that he doesn’t purposely derail the 999 to get here. Beyond the sequence where the rocket delivers large bags of gold coins to the government officials coming off as a bit silly, I really liked what they did and it is one of the more memorable episodes for me.